In recent years, Both ENDS has received an additional contribution of €875,000 from the Postcode Lottery for the Autonomy & Resilience Fund (2022–2025), implemented in collaboration with the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA). This support was essential because female environmental rights defenders around the world are increasingly facing climate change, repression and shrinking civil space. With this contribution, Both ENDS supports female activists and their communities with flexible, trust-based funding, enabling them to develop their own solutions to urgent environmental and climate problems.

Today, we look back on an inspiring event Civic space at the frontlines -
Environmental Defenders and the Role of International Trade and Investment Policy.  The panel exist of Michel Forst, UN Special Rapporteur Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention, Suzanne Kröger, Member of Parliament for GroenLinks–PvdA, Dr. Margit van Wessel, Associate Professor at Wageningen University, Anne de Jonghe, policy advisor at Both ENDS, and Jonila Castro, national spokesperson for Kalikasan People's Network for the Environment. With an audience of CSO experts, academics, accountability experts and students we discussed the effects of Dutch economic activity on Environmental Defenders, and what we all can do to support those on the front lines of the fight for the environment and human rights.

Both ENDS is present at COP30 to advocate for genuine access to climate finance for locally led, gender-just climate solutions and the mechanisms that facilitate this, including those for farmer-led restoration. Furthermore, the organisation participates to ensure the crucial connection between the climate negotiations and the trade and investment frameworks that shape them.

Learn more about the Both ENDS team at COP30 below, and find all the activities and side-events in which Both ENDS will participate.

Both ENDS is present at COP30 to advocate for genuine access to climate finance for locally led, gender-just climate solutions, and for the mechanisms that make these possible, including those supporting farmer-led restoration. The organisation also engages to highlight the crucial connection between climate negotiations and the trade and investment frameworks that shape them.

Below is an overview of the Both ENDS team at COP30 and a detailed look at the activities and side-events in which Both ENDS will participate.

On September 23th the European Union and Indonesia concluded their negotiations of the EU-Indonesia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), a free trade agreement between the EU and Indonesia. Both ENDS condemns this agreement for favoring corporate interests over those of local communities and the environment.

Both ENDS warns that the current debate on “simplification” of EU environmental law must not become an excuse to weaken or postpone urgently needed safeguards. In earlier contributions to the drafting of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), Both ENDS relayed the voices of local and Indigenous forest-dependent peoples, who consistently urged the EU to take responsibility for the massive deforestation linked to European imports. They underlined how this deforestation destroys biodiversity, undermines climate stability, and erodes their rights, livelihoods and cultures.

The Women Environmental Programme Burkina Faso (WEP BF or WEP) is leading the way in gender-just climate solutions, putting the power of advocacy directly into the hands of women farmers. “In Burkina Faso, women play a crucial role in food production and natural resource management, yet they continue to face systemic barriers to land ownership,” explains a WEP team member. “Despite legal provisions, deeply ingrained customary norms remain dominant, restricting women’s access to land as user rights only, which need to be mediated through male family members.” Without secure access to land, they face significant obstacles in sustaining their agricultural activities, improving local food security, and fully participating in their communities.

In the face of environmental transphobia, a form of discrimination where trans and gender-diverse communities are disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation,excluded from climate policies, and often met with stigma and exclusion by environmental justice movements, Grupo Orgulho, Liberdade e Dignidade (GOLD) has emerged as a bold and visionary force for change in Brazil. At the heart of this movement is Débora Sabará ,GOLD’s leader, a travesti activist who has fought tirelessly to place the perspectives andneeds of LGBTIQAPN+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer, Asexual, Pansexual, Nonbinary and other identities), Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian communities at the center of environmental justice conversations.